Network service providers and device manufacturers are continually challenged to deliver value and convenience to consumers by, for example, providing a suite of compelling network services. Subscription network services involve authenticating users during a user sign-on process. However, network resources are wasted and user experience is diminished when a user is required to sign-on several times to participate in several services available from the same network or service provider. Thus there is a move to allow a user to sign-on once and thereby gain access to several services from the same provider.
Federated identity, or the “federation” of identity, refers to technologies, standards and use-cases which serve to enable the portability of identity information across otherwise autonomous security domains, e.g., by different providers. The ultimate goal of identity federation is to enable users of one domain to securely access data or systems of another domain seamlessly, and without the need for completely redundant user administration. Changing an authentication process for one provider to a federated sign-on for multiple providers is challenging; and could involve modifying each service of each provider to use the federated procedure instead of, or in addition to, their internal authentication procedures.